


can't sit still or fix things

by QuietLittleVoices



Series: The Other Side [12]
Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The X Files, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 05:46:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16340909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuietLittleVoices/pseuds/QuietLittleVoices
Summary: Sammy doesn’t leave. Jack doesn’t realize he was expecting it until it keeps not happening.





	can't sit still or fix things

**Author's Note:**

> So! I'm back from the dead! sort of! I hope you enjoy this, it's basically Jack's POV of .. part of 'the prequel fic tm'.   
> I'm currently working on five (5) different long AU's.. I really hope to post the first one on Halloween, and then I'll be working on the two that'll round this series out for good!

It takes Jack a second to realize that it’s Sammy standing at the door, looking at him sheepishly.

“Hey,” Sammy says softly, more softly than Jack deserves or is used to, and Jack is suddenly all too aware that he hasn’t changed his clothes in… too long.

“Hi,” he replies awkwardly, and he can’t help the small rush of happiness that comes with realizing Sammy showed up here, for him.

“I brought food,” Sammy says, holding up a bag of take out. “I hope you haven’t eaten.”

Jack notices the bag for the first time. “What day is it?”

Sammy looks taken aback by the question and Jack wants to take it back so that Sammy stops looking so concerned. “Thursday,” he says gently.

Jack closes his eyes for a second. “I haven’t eaten in a while,” he admits.

“Let me in,” Sammy says. When Jack opens his eyes, Sammy is smiling at him, and he can feel something clench in his chest. 

 

Sammy doesn’t leave. Jack doesn’t realize he was expecting it until it keeps  _ not happening _ . Sammy shows up when he’s got himself stuck in a project and makes him laugh, and eat, and sleep. 

Sammy comes over to watch sport whatever Jack wants to ‘educate’ him in every week. He’ll put on whatever he can find and then try to explain the rules to Sammy while Sammy drinks his beer.

“So, see - that guy, he got to the second base, so that scores the team two points,” Jack explains, gesturing towards the screen. He looks over to see if Sammy is paying attention and notices that Sammy is already looking at him, not the screen, and grinning.

“You don’t even know what you’re talking about, do you?” Sammy teases.

Jack rolls his eyes. “I played baseball,” he mutters. “Once. When I was thirteen.”

“Of course you did,” Sammy says, shaking his head fondly.

For a second, Jack feels like he can’t breathe, and then he looks away from Sammy and nods, standing up from the couch. “Did you want another?” he asks, gesturing with the empty beer in his hands.

Sammy shrugs. “Sure.”

 

Jack makes his interest in having Sammy on his team clear and Sammy is still sent to Denver. He throws a going away party and then realizes that he and Lily are Sammy’s only friends in D.C., so he invites Lily and makes a joke out of it. He buys party hats but the packs come in fives so he throws out two of them, and Lily refuses to wear one so it’s left sitting in the middle of the table all night. Sammy wears his, though, and the smile on his face says he’s humouring Jack but Jack couldn’t care less.

He wakes up early to see Sammy off and urges Sammy to call him. Sammy says they can meet up during Easter and Jack doesn’t say anything about how far away that is, just hugs Sammy tightly and presses his face against Sammy’s shoulder. “I’m gonna miss you,” he says, and he feels Sammy take a shaky but deep breath.

“Me, too,” Sammy replies.

Jack tries to ignore the burning in his eyes and wipes at them as soon as they pull apart. He knows he shouldn’t be crying, that he’s overreacting, but he can’t help it. Sammy doesn’t seem to notice, anyway.

Jack waves until Sammy’s car disappears around the corner, and then he goes to get coffee and breakfast for himself and Lily.

 

He promised to talk to Sammy every night and so he does. Even though Sammy’s the one who’s two hours behind, he falls asleep on the phone regularly. Jack can hear how tired he is and he isn’t sure if Sammy’s just physically tired or if it’s something else. He doesn’t know how to ask that question, so he just stays on the line and listens to Sammy breathe.

Jack tries the words out, once. “Are you awake?” he says quietly, and when Sammy doesn’t reply he knows that it’s safe. “I love you.”

Sammy makes a sleepy noise on the other end of the line and Jack immediately hangs up the phone, heart pounding. 

He’s woken up by his phone ringing one night, a month and a half after Sammy left.

“Why are you calling?” Jack asks. 

“Thought you said I could call anytime,” Sammy answers. He sounds exhausted and upset, a horrible edge to his voice as he tries to make it casual and fails.

“I picked up, didn’t I?”  Jack says. He takes a deep breath, listening to Sammy move. “Is something wrong?”

Sammy laughs like it’s torn out of him and Jack feels something ache. 

“You can talk to me about anything.” Jack can see the distance stretch between them in his mind as he says it. He wishes more than anything that he could just go, get in his car, and drive to Sammy’s apartment like he used to be able to. He wants to just be there for Sammy and this feels woefully inadequate. 

“I miss you,” Sammy says finally, voice quiet and small in a way that Jack isn’t used to Sammy sounding.

Jack felt the ache in his chest get worse. “I miss you, too.”

Sammy hang up the phone immediately, and Jack could only hope that the feelings at the edge of his mind hadn’t leaked into his voice. 

 

Jack goes through all the case files and can’t find something active needing attention in Denver. He asks around and still gets nothing, so he takes a few days of vacation and books a flight.

“Are you serious?” Lily asks when she finds out.

Jack winces. “It’s just visiting!”

Lily raises her eyebrows at him. “Okay.” She didn’t sound convinced.

When Jack arrived in Denver, he asked the head agent if there were any cases for him, and he barely heard his negative reply when he noticed Sammy sitting at his desk across the room.

“Hello, Agent Stevens,” Jack says, nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet from how giddy just  _ seeing _ Sammy made him feel.

Sammy doesn’t say anything, his chair tipping dangerously when he stands up quickly and wraps his arms around Jack. Jack doesn’t let himself be startled by it and hugs him back just as tightly.

Sammy pulls away first. “What are you doing here?” he asks.

“I’m working,” Jack lies. It tastes bitter on his tongue as he says it, but he knows that  _ I just wanted to see you _ is… too much. It’s the wrong thing to say, because Sammy shifts away just a little.

“You probably need to get back to that,” he mutters, no longer meeting Jack’s eye.

Jack swallows around a lump in his throat. “Yeah.”

“Stay at my apartment?” Sammy asks quietly, voice coming out all in a rush.

“Of course,” Jack answers. He’d been planning on asking if Sammy hadn’t offered - he wasn’t about to waste any of what little time they had together.

When Sammy calls him, Jack doesn’t wait. He heads straight from the coffee shop to Sammy’s apartment. Sammy answers the door and Jack doesn’t hesitate, grabbing Sammy in a tight hug before the door is even closed. Sammy immediately buries his face in Jack’s shoulder, tightening his fists in the back of Jack’s suit jacket, and Jack just rubs his back slowly. Jack traces a line up Sammy’s spine, letting his fingers brush the soft hairs at the nape of his neck.

“I’ve missed you so fucking much,” Jack says, and it comes out more desperate than he wanted it to. 

Sammy doesn’t say anything, just nods and tightens his arms even more.

 

Jack walks out of his office to find Lily on his couch with her feet on his coffee table, eating from a take-out Chinese container. She gestures with her chopsticks to another matching container.

“Take a seat,” she says.

Jack eyes her suspiciously but picks up the container and sits next to her. “Thanks.”

“How was your weekend with Sammy?” she asks, not looking at him.

Jack takes a bite of food and waits for a second. “Fine,” he answers. “It was - it was fine.”

Lily finally looks at him and raises an eyebrow. 

Jack sighs and leans back. “It was great to see him, is that what you want me to say? It was amazing. I think we spent collectively like, less than a day together, but it was amazing.”

Lily nods. “Yeah. Are you ever gonna tell him?”

The food suddenly doesn’t look at all appetizing, so Jack sets it down on the table in front of him. “There isn’t anything to tell.”

Lily rolls her eyes. “You can’t keep crying on the phone to me about  _ how much you miss him _ , and  _ oh if Sammy were here _ . He deserves to know, and you… deserve to tell him.”

Jack stands up and takes his barely-eaten food with him. “I think we’re done here.”

“At least think about it,” Lily says, and then she stands up, leaving her empty container on the table, and walks out.

 

“What the fuck did you do, Jack?” Sammy says before Jack’s even completely answered the phone, and the bottom of his stomach drops out.

Jack curls his free hand into a fist, the nails biting into his palm. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, because he doesn’t. He hopes that he doesn’t.

“You sure as fuck do,” Sammy seethes. “You requested my  _ transfer _ ?”

“That went through?” Jack couldn’t help but be happy about it, even with the clear anger in Sammy’s voice. “How is that a bad thing?”

Sammy lets out a noise like a tea kettle boiling over, thin and angry. He mutters to himself and then goes silent. “You’re manipulating my career,” he says finally. “I didn’t earn this.”

_ Oh _ , Jack realizes. He also realizes that Sammy might never forgive him for this, and if he doesn’t - well, that’s it. Jack doesn’t know how he got along before Sammy, and is sure he won’t be able to after. Doesn’t even want to consider the possibility of an  _ after _ . “You hate it there, Sammy,” he says softly, because it’s the only thing he has left to say. “You won’t tell me and I hate that you feel like you can’t trust me with it, but I can tell.”

Sammy doesn’t answer right away. “Doesn’t make it better,” he grumbles, and Jack sighs because he sounds less upset now.

“I won’t blame you if you don’t accept it,” Jack says, and his nails sting the inside of his palm. He doesn’t want Sammy to have an option to say no, because then he might  _ say no _ and stay miserable and far away from Jack for who knows how long. “You  _ did _ earn this. I just requested it, the director approved it. Just think about it.” Sammy doesn’t answer, but Jack can still hear him breathing. “Goodbye, Sammy,” he says sadly. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” Sammy replies, and there was the small voice again that Jack had grown to hate. 

Jack hung up first.

 

Sammy doesn’t call him, so Jack doesn’t call first. Jack knew that he was the one who had to apologize, but he didn’t want to make it worse. 

“You  _ know _ he wants you to call,” Lily muttered.

Jack sighed as he sipped his beer across the table from her. “I don’t  _ know _ that.”

Lily just rolls her eyes, which was how she had taken to reacting any time Jack talked about Sammy. He knew that he wasn’t handling that… situation the best that he could be, but he couldn’t think of another way. She wanted him to just ask Sammy on a date, but that wasn’t an option.

He throws himself into work but he doesn’t have a project, there’s nothing pulling his interest when all he think about is how Sammy sounded on the phone during their fight, and how he’d sounded every night before that.

And then Sammy is standing in the doorway of his office and Jack feels his jaw hit the floor. It’s all he can do to not jump his desk before he’s got his arms around Sammy, and he can’t exactly remember how he got across the room so fast. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “You were right, I wasn’t thinking.  I just -  _ God _ , Sammy, do you have any idea how much I’ve missed you?” He pulls away a little to look Sammy in the eye, trying to convey what he couldn’t say so he wouldn’t have to say it.

Sammy’s smile is watery and about as strong as Jack feels. “A lot, if it’s half as much as I’ve missed you,” he says, and Jack can’t think about what that means. “I should have thought about it, I would have understood. I knew I was wrong as soon as I hung up.”

Finally Jack thought he could trust his legs again so he let Sammy go and lead him back to his desk.

 

The joy of seeing Sammy in the rental car next to him on the way to something weird and unusual doesn’t wear off. Jack wakes up every day and knows he’s going to share this thing he’s passionate about with the person who means the most to him. He makes excuses for Sammy to stay at the office late with him, or for them to do things after work, because he doesn’t want to be alone in his empty apartment where he’s more likely to fall into an obsession and lose himself without any interference. 

If there’s an opportunity for a road trip, Jack takes it. He didn’t as often before because it usually wasn’t necessary - phone calls got him most of the way to understanding most of his cases. It wasn’t about just finishing the job anymore, though.

Sammy groans in the car but doesn’t switch the radio station. “Can’t we listen to something less boring?” he wonders aloud.

“Nope,” Jack replies definitively, turning the radio up on a local call-in radio show he’d found where they seemed to be talking about the same creature they’d received reports of. “It’s research.”

Sammy sighs. “Not unless you’re planning on interviewing them.”

“That’s a great idea,” Jack agrees excitedly. “You should call in and spook ‘em a little.”

Sammy laughs and pulls out his phone. “That’s the first good idea you’ve had all trip.”

They end up heading right to the radio station to chat with the host, who got them in contact with a few locals who’d had first hand sightings, before heading to their motel.

Jack knew that Sammy sometimes slept on his couch when he got deep into a project, just to keep an eye on him, and that made Jack’s chest hurt in a way he didn’t like to think about. But that was nothing compared to how Jack felt trying to fall asleep when Sammy was less than ten feet away in the same room. Sometimes he let himself think about how it might be if things were different, but he couldn’t for long because that pain came back. He kept booking roadtrip cases anyway.

 

Jack doesn’t realize that he’s done it until later. Sammy is sitting in the back of an ambulance being assessed for a concussion when it comes over him all at once.

_ I kissed him _ . He remembers doing it in some hazy, dream-like way. There’d been so much going on, and Sammy had been hurt, he hadn’t thought about any of it.

Jack decides not to bring it up. Sammy is straight, and even if he wasn’t then there was no reason for him to be interested in Jack and all his self-absorbed nonsense. He put up with Jack more than anyone ever had, but that was already asking too much. 

It’s when Sammy doesn’t come back to Jack’s apartment when they get back from the case that Jack realizes he fucked up. They always go to Jack’s apartment, crack open a beer or not, and talk. It’s what they do most nights, but especially after a big case. Sometimes they watch baseball together, and Sammy pretends to be listening to Jack explaining it.

It takes two days for Jack to email Sammy after work, asking him to come over, and Sammy - to his credit - comes immediately.

“I’m sorry,” Jack says in a rush. “I shouldn’t have done that I don’t - I don’t know what I was thinking.” He looks down at his hands, trying to breathe through it but it keeps catching in his throat.

“Oh,” Sammy says in a tone that Jack can’t decipher.

“I don’t want you to be upset with me,” Jack continues quickly, hoping to get through it all before he loses his nerve. “I know you’re straight, and I would  _ never _ have done anything to make you uncomfortable if I was in my right mind but I just - I was so worried, Sammy. I thought I’d lost you.”

Sammy doesn’t say anything right away, and Jack looks at him out of the corner of his eye and realizes that Sammy isn’t looking directly at him either. “You think I’m straight?” Sammy asks finally, looking up to meet Jack’s eye and suddenly - the way Sammy is looking at him, confused but not upset anymore - something slots into place. Jack only has a few seconds to revel in the moment before Sammy grabs the lapel of his sweater and the back of his neck and his kissing him.  _ Sammy _ is kissing him, and Jack sighs against his mouth, tangling his hand in Sammy’s shaggy hair like he’s thought about.

Eventually they have to pull apart, but neither lets the other go far and they rest their foreheads together. “I’ve wanted to do that for… a long time,” Jack admits, and Sammy laughs.

“I’ve wanted to do that since the day we met,” he says. 

Jack smiles. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” Sammy says.

Jack can’t help it. He kisses Sammy again, because he knows Sammy isn’t going to walk away any time soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Please remember to comment if you enjoyed this! Like I said at the beginning, I'm getting ready to write the last two (real) fics for this series so if you've enjoyed it now's the time to let me know :)


End file.
